Brazil’s Vinegar Revolution: Left in Form, Right in Content

Part 6 of 6: The Internationalization of the Amazon and Blackwater Death Squads.

by Gearóid Ó Colmáin / August 16th, 2013

When President Barack Obama visited Brazil in 2011, he was greeted by protestors denouncing US imperialism in the region and its plans for a War on Libya. Protestors also denounced the 2 billion dollar loan given by the US government to state oil company Petrobras after it discovered one of the biggest oil fields in the world in Tupi in 2007. Protestors firebombed the US embassy before the protests and the police used plastic bullets and tear gas to crush the uprisings. These Brazilians were certainly not in need of an ‘awakening’.

Many of the protestors were members of the Workers Party. Although the leadership of the party tried to distance themselves from the protests, the strong anti-imperialist attitudes of the rank and file show that the PT cannot afford to neglect its social base if it wants to stay in power. The protests forced Obama to cancel a speech planned for Rio De Janeiro. This was a real popular uprising almost completely ignored by the international media, who were busy fabricating war propaganda as death squads slaughtered the Libyan people on behalf of the Western power-elite.

In 2008, the Wall Street Journal reported that George Soros invested 811 million in Petrobras, making it the most important asset in his portfolio. On June 25th,2013 Decomworld reported that Halliburton, one of the world’s oilfield services companies, had opened a new deepwater technology centre in Rio De Janeiro estimated at 31 BOE.

Halliburton was one of the corporations that profited most from the Iraq war of 2003, and it works closely with the notoriously corrupt mercenary company Blackwater, who has recently changed their name to Xe Services.

Brazilian general Durval Antunes de Andrate Nery, coordinator for the Centre for Strategic Studies of the National War College, told Brazilian newspaper O Dio in 2011 that the US mercenary company Blackwater was operating throughout Brazil, providing security services for 15 of the country’s oil platforms. He told O Dio:

If we were to take a boat and climb onto an oil platform, I guarantee you we would find Haliburton men armed to the teeth who would prevent us from entering.

One of the former directors of Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency was Nelson Narciso Filha, a former Halliburton man.

The general went on to relate how a colleague of his had spotted gunmen in the Yanamami Natural Reserve. Due to laws restricting the operation of the Brazilian military in the Yanamami Natural Reserve, the army officer had to get court authorization to enter the territory. When this was given, he encountered US Special Forces.

In 1991 President Fernando Collor de Mello created the Yanomami Natural Reserve. The new semi independent status for the mineral rich, gold rich region means that court authorization is required for military incursions into the Amazon. This has made it almost impossible for the Brazilian military to control their own national territory. The US regime has used the plight of “indigenous” peoples to reduce Brazilian sovereignty over the Amazon forest, which contains the most precious natural resources in the world.

The Yanomani people who live in South Western Venezuela and North Western Brazil were the subject of a disinformation campaign against the Venezuelan government on December 6th, 2012. Survival International, funded by multi-national corporations such as Virgin, accused President Hugo Chavez of covering up a massacre of Yanomani tribes by illegal gold miners. On its website it wrote “Survival Denounces Venezuela’s Whitewash of Yanomani Massacre”. The report was carried by the international media and accused Chavez of denying and covering up a massacre. The NGO was joined by the Organization for American States. It subsequently transpired that no massacres had taken place after the organization’s own investigators failed to find a shred of evidence to substantiate the outrageous accusations. Survival International was forced to issue an apology which appeared on the BBC’s website.

This incident is a cogent example of how easy it is for imperialist organizations to destabilize countries marked out for regime change. We are likely to see more of these fabricated in the near future. In the case of Venezuela, the purpose of the report was clearly to demonize President Hugo Chavez and punish him for his support of Gaddafi, Assad and other governments fighting imperialism, by using the same false accusations of “massacres” in order to tarnish the image of a country on Washington’s regime change target list.

Belo Monte Dam – “Save the Amazon!” Say Monsanto’s friends

Influential Harvard scholars such as Juan Henriques have advocated bringing the Amazon Forest under global institutions. Such a process would require stirring up ethnic conflict with a view to balkanization. The US government is funding indigenous communities in Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Brazil and Bolivia in order to weaken the governments of those countries. There are signs that conflict between indigenous communities and governments hostile to US interests may already be in the early stages.

For many years the Euro-Atlantic power elite have been calling for the internationalization of the Amazon rainforest that would see large areas of the forest coming under the control of international trusts. The discourse on global warming and “sustainability” are being used to justify this project which is being resisted by nationalists in Brazil.

Since taking office in 2010, Dilma Rousseff has been criticized by the Western establishment for conceding too much to “developmentalism” and not sufficiently protecting the Amazon rainforest.

The New York Times published an article on January 24th, 2012 entitled “In Brazil, Protection of Amazon Rainforest takes a step back.” The article reports that “Ms. Rousseff, a former energy minister, has so far flashed a more pro-development stance”. Rousseff, who previously attended a conference of the Bill Clinton Foundation alongside billionaires Vinod Khosla and Richard Branson, would appear to be misbehaving in her management of the Amazon. Khosla is another vulture capitalist attempting to get his hands on the Amazon. He is responsible for privatizing whole coastlines in California and sending armed thugs after surfers using ‘his’ beaches.

The New York Times’ piece quotes Brazil’s former Environment Minister Marina Da Silva approvingly. Marina Da Silva is critical of Rousseff’s environmental polices; this has made her into a star among elite circles in the Northern Hemisphere. For example, Silva was one of the flag bearers at the UK Olympics in 2012 to the surprise of the Brazilian government delegation at the games. Silva ran for president in the 2010 elections against Rousseff where she gained 21 percent of the vote. Communist Party Minister of Sport Aldo Rebelo, commented that Da Silva had always had good relationships with the European aristocracy. There are already reports claiming that Silva’s popularity has climbed considerably since the protest movement.

Silva’s ‘Sustainability Party’ was set up in February 2013 and the prospective presidential candidate has stated that she intends to imitate the internet-based campaign of Obama in 2008. The presidential campaign for the empire’s candidate started last June with the ‘Change Brazil’ movement. Silva’s racial, cultural and “rags to riches” background will make her an ideal candidate.

The World Wildlife Fund, an NGO, formerly presided over by the Duke of Edinburgh, was founded on September 11th, 1961 — Victor Stolen, Aldous Huxley, Prince Berhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, a former Nazi SS officer, and Godfrey Rockefeller from the famous American dynasty. The WWF is one of the principal globalist organizations lobbying for the internationalization of the Amazon. Although it presents itself as a disinterested, “independent” organization agitating for the conservation of nature, the WWF is financed by the UK’s Department for International Development, USAID and the World Bank. Its orientation therefore is a reflection of the foreign policy objectives of Britain and the United States.

In 1974 National Security Study Memorandum 200 was completed by the United States National Security Council under the direction of Henry Kissinger, a document which would subsequently become official US foreign policy.

The NSSM200 document states that population growth in developing countries represents a threat to US national security as hungry populations could rise up against exploitation by US multinationals. The document therefore recommends that “improved world-wide support for population-related efforts should be sought through increased emphasis on mass media and other population education and motivation programs by the U.N., USIA, and USAID.”

Brazil is among the countries where population control is required due to the importance of its natural resources for the US economy. This requires maintaining countries in the global south, less developed countries (LDCS) as resource colonies for the wealthy elite of the Northern Hemisphere. The document states:

We must take care that our activities should not give the appearance to the LDCs of an industrialized country policy directed against the LDCs. Caution must be taken that in any approaches in this field we support in the LDCs are ones we can support within this country. “Third World” leaders should be in the forefront and obtain the credit for successful programs. In this context it is important to demonstrate to LDC leaders that such family planning programs have worked and can work within a reasonable period of time.

Official US foreign policy requires preventing countries of the Global South from developing their economies so that they can be used as resource colonies by the Northern Hemisphere.

In order to develop their economy and improve the standard of living of their people, successive Brazilian governments have been trying to construct a major hydroelectric dam in Belo Horizonte, bringing cheap energy to the local population, driving infrastructure and economic development in some of Brazil’s poorest rural areas.

The Belo Dam project has been violently opposed for decades by local indigenous groups backed by the United States government, successfully stalling construction of the dam. However, the Lula administration gave the go ahead for construction of the dam in 2010. This has prompted an intensified mass media campaign led by the US government to stop the project.

It is astonishing that the US could attempt to present itself as a protector of the environment while it is aggressively promoting notorious ecocidal corporations such as Monsanto. Yet, the mass media is dutifully doing its job of misinforming the public about the real issues surrounding the Belo Monte Dam protests.

The Belo Monte dam is situated near the city of Altamira, not in the Amazon jungle as the mass media claims. Contrary to reports, the dam does not present a threat to the local environment, nor will it destroy the livelihood of local indigenous tribes. Some of the tribes, such as the Kayapo, presented by the mass media as the victims of the project, have been in contact with European culture for centuries, wear European clothing and use technology. These people need electricity and modernization. While the Kayapo are presented as indigenous tribes living in harmony with nature, they make money from supplying materials to the Body Shop, and the traditional costumes one sees in propaganda videos are not generally worn by the Kayapo population. In spite of the generous compensation and relocation provided to the Kayapo, procurators from Brazil’s Public Ministry continue to search for technicalities that would enable them to pursue civil lawsuits against the government in order to halt construction of the dam.

Public prosecutor for the state of Para, Felicio Pontes, is one of the lawyers attempting to stop the dam. In a 2011 video posted online he argues that no amount of compensation would satisfy the local population. Far from an aboriginal paradise, the village in the background shows children wearing shabby clothes and walking in bare feet. This is a sham campaign funded by US capital designed to prevent the industrial development of Brazil. Here again, the Public Ministry is acting in US interests against the Brazilian state and people.

US film director James Cameron is one of the agents being used by the US government to stop the Belo Dam project. His new Avatar film was a huge success in Brazil and is based on the narrative of an indigenous population threatened by a rapacious colonial power. The film is clearly an attack on the Brazilian federal government’s attempt to develop poor parts of the country. Cameron, a close associate of Arnold Schwarzenegger, is a multi-millionaire who has been exposed as a complete fraud on environmental issues. The film maker has argued that people are going to have to settle for less energy in the future, while his vast estate of helicopters, sports cars, submarines, and mansions consume more carbon emissions than entire villages.

FAOR – The State Department’s Ecological “Revolutionaries”

We have already mentioned the role of youth groups in US state department orchestrated “colour revolutions”.

One of the groups active in the “Stop the Belo Monte Dam” campaign is called FAOR and bears the same clenched fist logo of previous colour revolution groups in Eastern Europe and North Africa such as Otpor, Zubr and Kefaya. In the film Belo Monte, Announcement of War – FAOR activist Marquinhos Mota says that the group aims to “embarrass the Brazilian government”. The protests in June did an extremely good job at that.

The existence of such an activist group strongly indicates the involvement of the CANVAS and the US Government in a destabilization programme to bring down the left-leaning government of Dilma Rousseff. Such right-wing groups, dressed up in leftist garb, have been extremely effective in creating chaos in other countries and their activities pose a serious threat to Brazil’s national security.

There are many other US backed organisations involved in the Stop the Belo Monte Dam campaign such as Amazon Watch, the think tank Intituto Socio Ambiental, Comite Xingu and Movimento Xingu Para Sempre. Avaaz is also helping to stop industrialization in Brazil by running the “Stop Belo Monte” and “People Vs Banks” petitions.

There are many well made videos online such as Belo Monte-Announcement of War; Defending the Rivers of the Amazon (with Sigourney Weaver), Guardians of the Planet, Chief Raoni and his people.

Chief Raoni has become something of a Brazilian Dalai Lama, visiting the capitals of the world, meeting with world leaders to highlight the “oppression” of his people by the Brazilian government. Like the Dalai Lama, he sells phony spiritualism to naïve European audiences while calling for “intervention” to “save the Kayapo from “genocide”. Imperialist destabilization programmes always have their Chief Raonis.

Like CIA agent Dali Lama, Raoni is far from pacifist in his methods; threatening war against the Federal Government should the project go ahead. He would appear to have the backing of James Cameron who told Agence France Presse in June 2011, “The Kayapo are going to fight. They’re not going to just shrug and walk away. They’re the most aggressive tribe in the area”.

As aforementioned, US Special Forces and Xe Services mercenaries are already active in parts of the Amazon forest. There is nothing the US government loves more than proxy groups who will fight their battles. If the Kayapo decide on violence, they will get full back-up from these forces while the press will blame the Brazilian government and call for “humanitarian intervention” to “stop the massacres”.

All of these groups played a major role in the organization of the mass protests throughout Brazil in June. In accordance with US national security objectives laid out in NSM200, the US government is attempting to halt the Belo Monte dam by manipulating independent agencies of the Brazilian government such as the Public Ministry and IBAMA, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, and others.

Forbes Magazinereported in January 2011 that the Organization of American States, (AOS) acting through the Intercontinental Organization of Human Rights. “asked Ibama not to grant the full installation permit until the complaints of eight tribes were heard by the government.”

Unsurprisingly, Survival International stepped up their condemnation of the Brazilian government in the months leading up to the protest, while Avaaz were working on the problem of “corruption”. On its website, one can read of another “massacre” where the NGO accuses the Brazilian government of “shooting” Indians protesting against the Belo Monte Dam site. On their website we read:

Survival’s director Stephen Corry said, ‘History is repeating itself. The Figueiredo report, chronicling the genocidal atrocities of a past generation, has been unearthed at exactly the same time as new attacks on the Indians are unleashed. Killings of Indians should not be tolerated anywhere, let alone in a country planning to host world sporting events.

This is the same man who was absolutely sure a massacre had occurred in Venezuela in 2012. The reference to the world cup sporting events is worthy of note, considering its use later in the “spontaneous” uprisings in June.

International plutocrats want to weaken the sovereignty of the Brazilian federal state

Brazil’s aviation industry is generally closed to foreign investors. Branson has not disguised his desire to expand his aviation business in Brazil. Survival International has been an effective pressure group in the past, effectively being handed over to international institutions by the right-wing De Mello and Cardoso regimes of the 1990s. Branson funds Survival International. The do-good billionaire just happened to be in Sao Paulo for a conference on “sustainability” along with Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger, before Avaaz and co. launched their war on state-run public services and “government corruption”.

Many of the US financial sharks fund globalist organizations that advocate the take over of the Amazon rainforest by global trusts. Citigroup funds such “environmental” organizations as Rainforest Alliance.

In 2006 the Brazilian government condemned British plans to turn parts of the Amazon rainforest into an international trust. Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said that the rainforest was “not for sale’

In response to President Rousseff’s proposal to call a plebiscite in order to find out what the protestors want, some Facebook activists have called for military intervention to the “end the corruption”. As we write, further steps towards a fascist military coup are being taken in Brazil. As the Public Ministry pursues its highly controversial investigations of government ministers, the fascist right and the mainstream media are further entrenching the notion that left wing ideology is “corrupt”.

The Fohla da Sao Paulo newspaper published a report on July 12th claiming that the UGC, the General Union of Workers was paying people to protest during the “day of struggle” (remember the Arab spring’s “day of rage”) on July 11th, when workers throughout Brazil went on strike. Ricardo Patah, the head of the union has denied these claims.

Patah is a member of the right wing Social Democratic Party. Former vice presidential candidate for the right wing opposition in the 2010 presidential election, Indio da Costa is also a member of the Social Democratic Party; he has close ties with Washington through his friendship with millionaire Arick Wierson, a media tycoon and Wall Street investor.

There were reports of activists being paid by US regime change agencies in Tunisia and Egypt in 2011. The notion of a “day of struggle” resembles the “day of rage” strategy employed by the US State Department through its various agencies to mobilize youth against the North African regimes.

The far right have used the story to drum up support for a military intervention to put an end to the “left-wing” corruption in the country.

One might be surprised that the right-wing Fohla Da Sao Paulo would reveal one of the CIA’s traditional tricks, that is to say, paying people to demonstrate. The Fohla da Sao Paulo reporters decided to ask other protesters about the unions and the cause they represented. They spoke to CSB (Central dos Sindicatos Brasileiros-Centre of Brazilian Syndicates). When they asked one of the CSB protestors what union she represented, she had to ask a colleague. Then, after some prompting, she replied “this one here” pointing to her T-Shirt. When she was asked what specific union she represented, she replied “the workers”. Then she confessed that she has simply donned the T Shirt for 50 reals.

Of course, Fohla da Sao Paolo did not investigate the matter any further and were happy to allow their reactionary readers to believe that the PT government was paying pseudo unions to demonstrate. This is what most of the commentators on their website believed. That is because many of the unions demonstrating support the PT government and the Partido Communista do Brasil.

Folha could have mentioned the fact that these unions were demonstrating against the government and for the “workers” according to the best traditions of the CIA, Capitalism’s International Agency. There were also other actors who took part in the nasty little street theatre. The Partido do Causa Operaria, the Party of the Workers’ Cause, followers of the man Lenin called Judas Trotsky. The Trotskyite “communists” asked the CIA’s actors if they wanted to join them in further antics downtown, but the CIA’s poor unwitting street props decided to take the money and run! One can only imagine what euphoria, what joy, what beauty the world would experience if the CIA supported a good cause just for one day! The website of the UGT shows that they were quite numerous and impressive looking, well supplied with balloons and banners.

On the website of the UCT one can see pictures of the demonstrations by the Military Police. The Military Police are often called as back up in the brutal policing of the favelas. Many of the Military Police’s supporters are outright fascists and they have been calling for a return to military rule on Facebook and other social media since the start of the unrest in Brazil. A mass demonstration of Military Police supporters is apparently being planned for September. Although technology has improved since the 1960s, the basic operating procedures of imperialism manifest remarkable continuity. Peter Gribben writes:

The overthrow of Goulart and the destruction of democracy in Brazil was effected through the manipulation of diverse social groups. Police, the military, political parties, labor unions, student federations and housewives associations were all exploited in the interest of stirring up opposition to Goulart.

“The Disease of Bowing to Spontaneity”

In his famous essay, “What is to be done?” Lenin went to great lengths to point out that “spontaneous” movements of the working class do not lead to socialism, that they do not really lead anywhere but fall back into the clutches of the ruling class. Lenin chided the Marxists of his day for what he called the “disease of bowing to spontaneity”, that is say, theorizing uprisings of the working class as genuine movements towards socialism. Lenin was referring to worker’s movements in late 19th century Russia. He noted that the “spontaneous element” represented “consciousness in an embryonic form”. Lenin writes:

The workers were losing their age-long faith in the permanence of the system which oppressed them and began.. I shall not say to understand, but to sense the necessity for the collective resistance, definitely abandoning their slavish submission to the authorities. But this was, nevertheless, more in the nature of outbursts of desperation and vengeance than of struggle.. the revolts were simply the resistance of the oppressed, whereas the systematic strikes represented the class struggle in embryo, but only in embryo.

Occupy Wall Street, Los Indignados and the current protests in Brazil all fall into the category of revolts “in embryo”. The difference today is that the revolts are being fomented by imperialism itself, with the result that the embryo never becomes a baby, is never born; the revolution is aborted from the start. The idea is to co-opt social discontent and prevent it from becoming conscious through fake revolutions which reinforce the powers of the old order and increase social repression. The elites are inverted Marxist-Leninists.

Lenin argued “that those who are determined always to follow behind the movement and be its tail are absolutely and forever guaranteed against belittling the spontaneous element of development’’.

The same could be said today. When the infamous “Arab Spring” broke out in Tunisia in 2011, communists the world over all gave their support for the “spontaneous uprising of the masses”. They shock their heads vigorously at any mention of geopolitics and the role of American NGOs in leading the “spontaneous” protests. In fact, the US State department was so confident in the superiority of their soft power and the efficacy of their disinformation system that they boldly proclaimed the “Jasmine Revolution”, the same name CIA installed dictator Ben Ali used to describe his seizure of power in 1987.

Communists all over the world were fooled into supporting the “popular” uprisings and only the intelligent communists back peddled when it became clear that the Arab Spring was being used to bomb Libya. Instead of concrete institutional analysis of the events in Tunisia and Egypt, communists proved to be little more than what Lenin described as “tailists”.

Lenin condemned the “disease of bowing to spontaneity” among Marxists who were convinced that the masses would spontaneously move towards socialism through strikes and mass uprisings.

The corporate “revolutionaries” of the Centre for Applied Actions and Strategies and many of the other “people power” NGOs have openly admitted that they have studied the works of Lenin. This is not in order to follow in the footsteps of the Bolshevik revolutionary but rather to lead the masses in precisely the direction which Lenin showed would serve the interests of the bourgeoisie. They are the methods and tactics of Trotsky whom Lenin repeatedly denounced as a right-wing opportunist who used left slogans that served a right wing agenda.

The concrete, global conditions have changed since Lenin’s day. Today, the ruling class has mastered the art of artificial, pre-emptive “spontaneous uprisings” that suck up the youthful energy of the masses and use it to emasculate genuine social movements. Part of this process involves diverting social discontent into acts of imbecility in a process we could describe as the stultification of dissent and the use of humour and silliness to undermine authority: naïve and empty slogans that attack national institutions rather than the trans-national financial entities that control them. Such actions serve to reinforce the existing order and it is of vital importance for communists and progressives of all persuasions to understand the scale of these new fake social movements and their methodologies, rather than naively believing that people jumping up and down in the street are “spontaneously” going to lead the people against capitalism.

Conclusion: What is to be done?

In this series, we have looked at the evidence for US destabilization in Brazil. We have argued that regime change strategies are being deployed through social media and fake social movements, the corruption of the judiciary, and the attempt to rob the Brazilian’s Federal Republic’s sovereignty over the Amazon and jungle, and its vast, natural resources.

The protests in Brazil bode ill for the future of that country as a viable nation state; for the security, dignity and autonomy of Latin America and for the BRICS project to construct a multi-polar world order, which are prerequisite preliminary stages in the struggle for working class emancipation.

They have sowed doubt and a sense of shame in a nation that is emerging as a great power in the world; they have dented the popularity of the social democratic Workers Party to the advantage of the reactionary right and the fascists. It is likely that the protest movement will continue, albeit sporadically from now until the election campaign.

Washington will hope that the sense of national unease and discontent created by the protests will dent Dilma Rousseff’s popularity sufficiently to allow a victory for their candidate who is most likely to be Marina Silva, an acolyte who they hope will raise interest rates; sell off state companies to foreign investors, impose austerity and martial law; hand over the Amazon Rainforest to global institutions, while putting an end to the BRICS and prospects for a multi-polar world order.

US imperialism is on the march throughout Latin America. In 2011, two major US military bases were set up in Chile and Argentina. The US military’s Southern Command is conducting training of local military personnel as part of their Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain. There has been massive unrest against capitalism in Chile over the past couple of years, which hundreds of thousands of students taking to the streets.

Washington realizes that the only way to maintain the capitalist order in the region is to train the death squads that will target the genuinely popular uprisings that will challenge the New World Order in the coming years.

According to an agreement signed in 2011, US military forces can now operate in Chile whenever there is social unrest. The US military has also set up a new military base in Argentina’s Chaco State close to the Guarani Aquifer, one of the world’s largest reserves of fresh water. The Chaco State base will enable the US military to have easy access to Brazil’s Southern cities.

With militarist regimes in Colombia, Chile, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay and Mexico, US imperialism is rapidly tightening its noose around progressive forces in Latin America.

The strategy of “creative destruction” has come to Brazil. There is a real danger that the protest movement will sooner or later bring down the Brazilian state, creating a failed state where anarchy and chaos will provide the pretext for US intervention through private mercenary corporations such as Blackwater.

It has been the contention of this essay that there is a fifth column operating inside the institutions of the Brazilian state. This is not the kind of corruption US funded NGOs try to eliminate; this is the corruption they spawn and protect. If the state is to survive the attack, it will have to be able to identify the traitors and saboteurs who are working on behalf of foreign powers. The naïve protestors in the streets are not the culprits here. It is the board directors and faceless corporate executives who are orchestrating regime change through the protest movement; these are the people threatening the future stability of the country.

The globalist “people power” street coups organized by imperialist NGOs linked to Wall Street should not be confused with the genuine people’s uprisings in Greece where there are genuine political parties, such as the Communist Party of Greece, representing the working class who are mounting a heroic struggle against plutocracy. Similar struggles are being waged every day throughout the world.

Hugo Chavez of Venezuela admitted that the US attempt to oust him in 2002 woke him up to the reality that one cannot compromise with imperialism, that capitalism with a human face was impossible. Venezuela, in contrast to Brazil, has made great strides laying the foundations for a transition to socialism. If the national bourgeoisie in Brazil is to survive, it will have to move considerably to the left in alliance with the workers and poor peasants.

It will need to challenge the power of the media moguls such as Globo News who are manipulating and misinforming the masses. The Brazilian government should respond to those calling for an investigation of Globo Rede’s alleged tax evasion.

Tailing behind the protests were thousands of genuine left-wing activists from all the left parties and social movements.

Many activists shouted slogans against the major corporate media. There is already a movement afoot to democratize the media, with organisations such as Intervoces and the Landless Peasants Movement. Communications secretary of the Central Unica dos Trabhaladores, Rosane Bertotti, is hoping to gain 1.6 million signatures to force the government to do something about the demonic disinformation machine that is the mainstream Brazilian media.

Responding to the panic in financial markets after the protests Finance Minister Guide Mantega said that the media was deliberately attempting to create a climate of instability.

How can a government expect to run a country, and protect the national interest against imperialism when the means of communication are in the hands of the enemies of the people? Nationalizing some of the major media would enable the government to investigate and educate the population on the activities of dubious NGOs operating in Brazil on behalf of foreign powers. Media reform is a matter of national security and the Rousseff administration needs to act quickly to respond to the demands of protesters calling for this.

Claire Rigby, writing for the Fohla da Sao Paolo,describes how the main stream, brainwashed protestors reacted with a mixture of hostility and bafflement when they encountered truly conscious, genuine protestors demanding media reform.

She describes how the entranced Facebookers came to a halt in front of the conscious, grassroots activists. They stopped and stared at them for a moment, then continued chanting the slogan provided by the aforementioned Fiat commercial.

The key question for genuine activists will be how to engage these young misled youth in critical thinking, how to unplug them from the postmodern, corporate matrix of empty slogans and meaningless protest, so that they can begin to see the true conditions of their existence and identify those who are manipulating and controlling them, developing class consciousness in the process. The government should provide adequate funding to the alternative media such as community radio and television stations and progressive, participative websites. The example of Venezuela should be studied.

It will need to chase out US NGOs and agencies that have a history of destabilizing countries and overthrowing their governments.

The Brazilian government will have to take control of the commanding heights of the economy. It will have to break, once and for all, with neoliberalism and draft an ambitious state plan to eliminate poverty. But it will need to act fast. The tide is now turning in favour of imperialism as few analysts on the left seem to understand the complex destabilization currently taking place and are focusing instead on the hypocrisy of a so-called ‘left’ wing government that has done little for the working class, but it HAS done little and that is the difference between social democracy in developing countries and fascism. Little is better than nothing at all and little is and always has been far too much for US imperialism.

Social democracy in developed economies is a tool used by the ruling class to destroy the gains of the working class but in developing countries, social democracy has a role similar to that of the socialists in Spain during the 1930s. While social democracy is the means by which the ruling class co-opts the labour movement it is NOT fascism. This is something Trotskyites have never understood. In the Spanish civil war, the Trotskyite ultra-leftists denounced the social democratic government; they indulged in violent actions which discredited left wing ideology; they refused to support the democratic, popular front against fascism. The result was the triumph of Franco. The followers of Trotsky are behaving in a similar fashion today, supporting far right ‘rebels’ in Libya and in Syria, and cheering on the CIA’s ‘protest’ movement in Brazil. The Socialist Workers Party is a safe haven for the petty bourgeois rebel, but no place for a revolutionary.

Brazilia will need to mobilize the people against US imperialism as the Libyan government did in 2011 and as Syria has done since the attack on that country in March 2011, where mass demonstrations against NATO were organized. Uniting the population will now be extremely difficult in the country as confusion and discontent have been spread by the “Vinegar Revolution”. The psychology of the US “smart-power” colour revolution involves instilling profound feelings of disgust with national institutions. Those feelings of abhorrence often translate into a perception that the “developed” world is somehow better, that there is something inherently corrupt about the national culture that needs help from first world NGOs and civil society organizations, in short, the “international community”, that is to say, the United States.

Instead of going along with the US-backed protests, communists should be denouncing their reactionary organizers and backers and warning the working class and peasantry of their pernicious influence. It is time for left wing organizations to stop being “tailists” and start becoming leaders.

While attempting to steer the protests in the direction of anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism may have some positive effect, it would be far more effective to expose the imperialist conspiracy against the country and organize a mass movement on that basis, a movement which could be a lever for real social change.

While Marxist-Leninists will be reluctant to get behind the capitalist Workers Party, a party of the ruling class, they need to realize that, while the class struggle is permanent, the current crisis is being played out as a struggle between national sovereignty and global governance, the national bourgeoisie whose interests require state regulation to boost domestic industry and the comprador bourgeoisie, whose home is determined by their financial interests and investments; the concrete historical conditions therefore require a temporary, strategic alliance with the national bourgeoisie against US imperialism, whose fifth column in Brazil is constituted by the comprador bourgeoisie. This struggle can only be led by the Marxist-Leninists, who will be in a much strengthened position once imperialist forces are defeated. That strengthened position will then enable them to acquire the basis for a transition to socialism.

Otherwise, the vultures of international finance capitalism will invade the country from all sides, using their vast panoply of networks, journalists, activists, Special Forces and mercenaries to plunge sunny Brazil into abysmal darkness.

Gearóid Ó Colmáin is a political analyst based in Paris. He is a frequent contributor to Russia Today, Radio Del Sur and Inn World Report. His blog can be reached at Metrogael. Read other articles by Gearóid.